We stepped out of the old warehouse and back into the mundane world, the heavy steel door clanking shut behind us like the closing of a vault. The late afternoon sun seemed unnaturally bright, the sounds of traffic on Milwaukee Avenue jarringly normal. We had just handed the key to a man's destruction—and perhaps our own salvation—to a chain-smoking journalistic oracle who had looked at us like we were something she'd scraped off her shoe. I felt a profound, unnerving sense of vertigo, the kind you get when you step off a rollercoaster that you're not sure is properly bolted to the ground. The single most important object in my life was no longer in my possession.
"So that's it?" I asked, my voice sounding distant to my own ears. "We just… wait?"
"That's it," Kevin confirmed, adjusting the duffel bag on his shoulder. He looked calmer than I felt, but I could see a new tension in the set of his jaw. "We did our part. We delivered the weapon to the person who knows how to use it. Now we have to trust her to pull the trigger."
Trust. The word felt foreign. In the past few weeks, my world had shrunk to a paranoid bubble occupied only by myself, a ghost, and my new, strangely competent partner. Entrusting our fate to an outsider, no matter how capable, felt like a massive gamble.
Inside my chest, Jessica's presence was a chaotic swirl of energy. The hope she'd felt when I found the proof was now churning with a sharp, anxious impatience. She had waited six months for justice, trapped in a cold, lonely purgatory. Waiting another day, another hour, was agony for her. Her agitation seeped into me, making my own skin crawl.
"She's not happy about waiting," I muttered, rubbing my chest.
Kevin nodded in understanding. "Vengeful spirits aren't known for their patience. But Sarah Jenkins isn't just going to dump the files online. That's not how she works. She'll verify every single piece of data. She'll find corroborating sources. She'll build an ironclad case. When her story drops, there won't be any room for doubt. Finch won't be able to dismiss it as a smear campaign. He'll be finished. That takes time."
He led the way to a small taco stand, one of those brilliant, no-frills places that Chicago hides in plain sight. He ordered for both of us, and we ate standing on the sidewalk, the simple, savory meal a grounding ritual in the midst of the insanity. The original plan from the ending snippet of the book flashed through my mind—the protagonist being impatient for a meal. This felt right. Even when your life is a supernatural thriller, you still have to eat.
"So what do we do?" I asked around a mouthful of carne asada. "Just go back to our lives and pretend everything is normal?"
"For now, yes," Kevin said. "That's the hardest part. You go back to your job. You act normal. Finch is paranoid now. He's going to be watching everyone around him. The most dangerous thing you can do is act suspicious. You need to be boring, invisible. Just another cog in the machine. And you need to work on your shielding. The last thing we need is for you to have a panic attack in your cubicle and broadcast your fear to every psychic bottom-feeder in the Loop."
He was right. My life as Alex Carter, data-entry clerk, was now my most important cover.
The next few days were some of the longest of my life. I went to my beige office, sat in my beige cubicle under the soul-sucking hum of the fluorescent lights, and transferred numbers from one spreadsheet to another. The sheer, mind-numbing banality of the work was a surreal contrast to the high-stakes drama consuming my inner world. My coworkers chatted about their weekend plans, complained about the Bears' preseason performance, and debated the merits of a new streaming show. I would nod and smile, all while feeling the cold, vengeful presence of a murder victim in my chest and running through the logistics of a corporate takedown. I had never felt so utterly alienated from the human race.
I'd catch myself scrolling through the Innovate Solutions public website, staring at Harold Finch's smiling corporate headshot, a knot of hatred and fear tightening in my gut. He was right there, a few miles away in a glittering downtown skyscraper, living his life, completely unaware that his downfall was being meticulously constructed in a dusty loft by a woman who ran on caffeine and rage. The disconnect was dizzying.
Each evening, I'd meet Kevin in a different quiet park or library. He was making good on his promise to train me. He taught me the basics of mental shielding, guiding me through meditation exercises that felt impossible at first.
"Don't fight the feelings," he'd instruct patiently as I sat cross-legged on the grass, trying and failing to quiet my racing thoughts. "You can't stop a river by building a dam with your bare hands. Just step out of the water. Observe it from the riverbank. Acknowledge Jessica's anger, her impatience. See it, name it, and then let it flow past you. You are the rock; her emotions are the water."
It was slow, frustrating work. Jessica's psychic screaming for vengeance was a constant distraction. But little by little, I started to get it. I learned to create a small, quiet space in the back of my own mind, a shielded room where I could think without being completely overwhelmed. My control over the empathy skill grew from a broken firehose to a leaky faucet. It was progress.
During one session, I managed to hold my focus for a full five minutes. When I opened my eyes, Kevin was looking at me with a rare expression of approval.
"See? You're a natural," he said.
"I feel like my brain is going to melt," I confessed.
"That's how you know it's working," he said with a wry smile. He hesitated for a moment, then spoke again, his voice quieter. "My grandfather used to make me meditate on a single grain of rice for hours. He said if you can find the universe in something that small, you can build walls strong enough to keep out anything. I thought he was just being a cruel old man. Turns out, he was right."
It was the first time he had ever shared something truly personal. It was a small glimpse behind his professional, monster-hunter facade, a reminder that he was also just a guy who'd had to learn all this the hard way. In that moment, our partnership felt less like a business transaction and more like a real friendship, forged in the crucible of shared insanity.
On the fifth day of waiting, it happened. I was at work, staring blankly at a spreadsheet, when my personal phone—my old, normal, cracked-screen phone—buzzed in my pocket. It was an email, from an encrypted address I didn't recognize. The sender name was simply "S.J."
My heart leaped into my throat. I hunched over my desk, trying to shield the screen from my coworkers. The body of the email contained only seven words.
He's dirtier than you think. Stay quiet. Stay safe.
That was it. That was all. But it was everything.
A wave of dizzying relief washed over me, so potent I had to grip the edge of my desk to steady myself. She believed us. She had looked at the proof, and she had started digging. And she had found more. The story was real. The cannon was loaded.
The relief, however, was immediately chased by a new, colder wave of fear. Sarah Jenkins was now actively investigating a powerful, dangerous man. Her actions would be like poking a hornet's nest with a stick. Finch would become more paranoid, more desperate. He would start looking for the source of his problems. He would start looking for me.
The waiting wasn't over. The most dangerous part had just begun.